Friday, October 1, 2010

Grantpirrie - Lionel Bawden

A Void / La Disparition

Now we love Lionel and there's no way we can hide that... he's best known for his pencil sculptures those astounding creations that won the Wynne prize a couple of years ago and have a total sense of themselves. This time it's a suite of paintings...

BUT we have to be honest here... we also can't hide our dislike of acrylic paint ... it lacks the lustre of oils, the texture of oils and that is a shame because compositionally these paintings are great .... hidden spaces in the rocks ... secret little worlds...

Can't help thinking that the pairing of a few sculptures with these works might have made more sense of the paintings ... and that's not a big stretch because the subject is strangely the same...

Lionel is a rare talent but please can he buy some oil paint..... because acrylic paint just doesn't cut the mustard....